#OLXMadAds is perfect blend of creativity & technology: Gaurav Mehta, OLX

In 2006, it revolutionised the concept of buying and selling every thinkable thing in India. OLX, since then, has always tried to create customer engagement with new innovative and ground-breaking initiatives.

Through a unique new initiative, ‘Make your Mad Ad’, OLX is encouraging its sellers to sell their products in a never-experienced-Before way. Sellers can now create their own video ads on OLX and sell things in a fun way. To make this whole experience more effective, OLX has created 10 wacky characters and users can choose from them to sell their products in seconds. The campaign is created by Leo Burnett.

Speaking about the motivation behind this innovative initiative, Gaurav Mehta CMO - South Asia, OLX says, “The entire base of ads on OLX is 100% user generated. Given the same, OLX marketing over the years has focused on customer education around building good quality content. Continuous engagement on the same front has helped our users develop a good functional understanding of creating good ads. This initiative is to share ideas and tools with them on making the content more engaging by making them interesting along with being informative. This would further enable our valued users to sell faster and get better value for their products. Overall, the campaign is a step towards the next wave of consumer engagement. It allows users to build ‘engaging content’ and to make their ad posting differentiated.” This differentiated approach is expected to appeal to more sellers.

RajDeepak Das, Chief Creative Officer, Leo Burnett believes that in the changing times, OLX video ads are the perfect example of how consumer insights, technology and creativity can come together to create effective ads. He expresses, “OLX India, being India’s largest marketplace wanted to engage consumers in a unique way. In this age of content creation and sharing, with millions of videos being passed around each day through YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook and other social networking sites, we wanted to provide OLX users a tool that not only simplifies selling but also makes it fun. Thus was born #OLXMadAds. The #OLXMadAds platform is a true demonstration of how we can use creativity and technology together to create magic for a brand.”

The ads go through a stringent evaluation process before they are uploaded. Gaurav says, “We are evaluating this campaign from the perspective of content scores. Customer engagement, likeability, share-ability are among the various criteria we shall use to evaluate the effectiveness of these campaigns. We expect that this would persuade users to start making more engaging ad postings and hence would be another enabler in our endeavour to fulfil the brand promise of faster and easier transactions.”

The whole process is very user-friendly. Sellers just have to enter details about the product they wish to sell and can also select their own colour, price etc. Based on which, OLX generates an amusing and funny video sales ad which will help in pitching their products in a better way. OLX is making efforts to ensure no two ads are identical.

'Make your Mad Ad' would not only help sellers, but would also enrich buyers’ experience on OLX. “Buyers seek complete information about the products available on OLX. In addition, interesting ads inspire buyers to be able to make a decision more efficiently. In the long run, as content quality on OLX improves, we strongly believe that both the buyers and sellers stand to gain equally”, he says.

The characters includes Astronaut Nasa Musa, YogaNand Shri, Bomb Bomb Bole, Dr Threesome Awesome, Death of Elizabeth, Lallan Top, Law-D Lady, Mr Bananas, Aachoo Pichoo and Silly Lilly and are conceptualised by Leo Burnett. These 10 characters are exaggerated personas of people or characters that we have met or seen sometime in real or reel life. He thinks that the characters are key to the campaign as they are relatable yet bring a smile on one’s face with their antics.

Talking about future plans, Gaurav is confident that innovative ideas and usages in the future will only enhance the experience on OLX platform.